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bazzalunatic writes "Digitally remastered footage of the moon landing, including high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder will be shown for the first time ever to the general public at an awards ceremony in Sydney, Australia. The magnetic data tapes seem to have all been lost — erased — by NASA, so all that's left are VHS recordings, which have been restored, giving the best-ever film of the whole moon landing. The publicity over this seems to be pushing NASA into releasing the whole 3-hour recording."

Oh boy...
Never really thought about it like that . LOL Your gonna bring all the freaks out now.

What I heard was the Moon landing was done on a soundstage with a sandbox as a set and Bungee cords for moving.

This story just proves it I mean how likely is it that just found a Vhs copy in someone garage and
all the high quality masters just happened to be erased ??? (Lol.... ducks... sorry Nasa type people joke..... )

That's why they wont release all the footage that shows the boom mics, the director calling cut and making them reshoot it.. or Neil in his suit screaming at a lighting guy who was walking around on set.

Im sure there are millions of people that come on the net claiming things that arent the truth, and I could care less if you believe this or not. But, Neil is a close personal friend of my family, Ive met him personally (though briefly) once, and he has some very interesting and detailed stories about his experience. I cant imagine that he would make up that sort of detail, and continue to propigate such a lie with even with his close friends for so long. Not to mention that it just seems unlikely that afte

So... Taken with a high definition camera, beamed 400,000 km, received in Australia, displayed on a low resolution screen, recorded with a camera pointed at said screen, sent around the world to the US, saved on reel to reel tapes, dubbed from reel to reel to VHS, digitized and uploaded to a computer, digitally enhanced, and then made available to the world on the internet. And even ignoring the fact that every step of the process could only ever remove information, it's still probably one of the most impo

Usually I do RTFA, but in this case I didn't see what TFA could add, unless the video of the landing itself is linked. There are way too many times I bother to go to TFA only to find that it's just the/. summary with a lot of padding and usually a whole lot of annoying advertising. (example) [slashdot.org]

There was no VHS at the time of the airing of the First, Second, or Third Doctors either.

Nevertheless some of the lost episodes were recovered from VHS or Betamax because that's all we have left. Perhaps some engineer copied the original 1969 tapes over to a VHS collection. Then the originals were erased by an idiot, so all that's left are the backups.

Aside - VHS is a really crummy format for storage. Only ~320 pixels across by 486 scanlines. The original magnetic tapes from 1969 probably offered the full resolution possible with NTSC-I, or about ~640x480. Super VHS can capture that full resolution, but not regular VHS.

Aside - VHS is a really crummy format for storage. Only ~320 pixels across by 486 scanlines. The original magnetic tapes from 1969 probably offered the full resolution possible with NTSC-I, or about ~640x480.

Without actually looking that up I think you have the VHS numbers backwards. NTSC (Standard US analog TV format) has 525 scan lines, with only 486 visible (the rest oer used for synchronization and vertical retrace) and VHS is interlaced. I think VHS is 486 wide and 260 scan lines, but I could be wrong

Am I the only one who sees the growth of mad conspiracy theories such as the "faked moon landing" as a sign post on the road the the decline of our civilization?

I was at a party a while ago in which I met a seemingly intelligent professional who seemed to honestly believe that humans never landed on the moon. I suspect that though some of the posts calling the landing fake are trolls, I believe that many who believe the landing is fake are sincere. I do not believe this is a harmless trend.

Yeah, I'm also shocked at how many youngish people (up to, say, early 20s) believe it was faked. I'm not sure if it's just a hip contrarian stance or a cynical view of government endeavours of all sorts or what, but it's pretty depressing.

Anecdotally, I know a woman in her late 30s who believes they were faked. She is a director at the local Science World.

Anecdotally, I know a woman in her late 30s who believes they were faked. She is a director at the local Science World.

OMG 8-(

Most of the moon landing deniers I know are 40+. I only know a couple of them my age, one is a total tinfoil-hatter in general (an IT guy who works for a hotel), and the other I just learned is such a raging gay basher that she thinks "the gays are taking over the world." (the receptionist at my office).

People believe it was faked because they don't want to believe we were capable of something 40 years ago that we are not capable of today. They want to have hope for the future, but the moon landing is an obvious sign of decline (or rather, the fact that it happened so long and we can't do it today is an obvious sign of decline).

People believe it was faked because they don't want to believe we were capable of something 40 years ago that we are not capable of today. They want to have hope for the future, but the moon landing is an obvious sign of decline (or rather, the fact that it happened so long and we can't do it today is an obvious sign of decline).

]

Understandable...yes. Excusable...no. In fact I might argue that our tendency to discard objective facts for fanciful opinions lies somewhere near the root of why we no longer have the ability to travel to the moon. We are, I believe running our society based on fanciful ideologies that are not good models for reality, be they economic ideologies or social ideologies. We ascribe certainty to dubious systems of ideas, while exaggerating the inherent inductive uncertainty of the scientific process.

Worse yet, this all starts with school and parents, at an early age. You tell your kid "don't ask stupid questions" or "because it is so" once too many times, and they learn for you to turn rationality off. Then they grow up believing all sorts of crap.

Am I right in thinking that data recovery firms (and government agencies) can pull data off a hard drive, even after it's been overwritten - possibly several times? (Yes, if you overwrite it with random noise, that might make it hard to guess what was there before, but if you just record a normal file or video over the top, that'll have a set of known statistics that make it possible to subtract out and recover the earlier data.)

And if that's the case, why can't they recover the original recordings - which

Am I right in thinking that data recovery firms (and government agencies) can pull data off a hard drive, even after it's been overwritten - possibly several times? (Yes, if you overwrite it with random noise, that might make it hard to guess what was there before, but if you just record a normal file or video over the top, that'll have a set of known statistics that make it possible to subtract out and recover the earlier data.)

Actually with modern hard drives 1 wipe with 1s, 0s, or random data is enough. 2 wipes if you want to be extra sure. Just the other day I noticed that the Linux wipe utility's "quick" mode does 4 wipes! WTF, get with the times!

No one can "pull data" off a modern hard drive after you overwrite it just once. Stop believing in fairytales.

As for analog recordings -- with audio recordings that were erased once but not overwritten, you can usually make out words. With video, whatever quality is left is so poor that even a 3rd gen copy from that will look better.

Tapes where expensive and took a while to get. SOP was to reuse the tapes.Hey, you wouldn't want them wasting tax dollars on a tape that would just be sitting around, would you?It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.

And they where only reused one they had been ensured it had been taped for broad cast. That meant there where many copies in many formats. well 3 formats I think.

There was also a format issue in the 80's the made them reuse tapes for a period. IIRC

There was also a format issue in the 80's the made them reuse tapes for a period. IIRC

Right, because Betacam and VHS recorders were not readily available, so they destroyed original footage of monumental achievements.

I understand the root cause: NASA has since the '70s been under-funded but still - they could have saved the footage by going to newer, superior and less expensive formats and preserve the original media.

Agreed - if they needed cash so much, surely they could have sold the originals for many, many times their worth as digital recording media to any number of national museums who would have lovingly preserved them.

It's important to remember the context. From pretty much everyones point of view, they would be going to the moon so often it wouldn't be a big deal.

No, the context was a worldwide event that inspired and united a generation, nay, a populous, on a scale never seen before or since, and everyone at the time was well aware of the significance. It was the *first* human exploration of an extraterrestrial body, and the first recording thereof. The first of anything is always more historic, important, and monume

If you look at the NASA staffing for the data collection areas during that time you will not see the position Archivist anywhere. Lots of engineers and scientists but no qualified librarians or archivists.

An old man, sitting in his couch, watching himself in an old college football match. Repeating over and over the twenty seconds where he scored a touchdown.

But the old man isn't really old. He has a strong, young body. He could stand up and go play another football match. Score another touchdown. But he's too tired, so he'll just play the old tape. Over and over again.

If I'm reading the parent post correctly, he's basically saying that rather than go out for another moon landing today, we can instead sit back and reminisce over glory days of the past. It's nothing to do with the video itself, but rather the attitude behind showing the video to the public.

Well screw that. Lets make history by looking toward the future rather then looking back which accomplishes little to nothing in the process.

>But he's too tired, so he'll just play the old tape. Over and over again.

More like, old men watch their past glories while young men plan new ideas old men couldn't conceive, namely privatization of LEO and GEO for a fraction of the cost and a new capsule and rocket system for an asteroid mission in 15 years and an eventual Mars mission, while the old men keep rambling about the moon.

An old man, sitting in his couch, watching himself in an old college football match. Repeating over and over the twenty seconds where he scored a touchdown.

But the old man isn't really old. He has a strong, young body. He could stand up and go play another football match. Score another touchdown. But he's too tired, so he'll just play the old tape. Over and over again.

What you're forgetting to mention is that the man was only playing football in college to spite a rival college and that he was funding his

Every time you shit all over a space-related thread, I die a little inside:-(

"Everyone quit with this boring exploration crap and make us live longer! I'm not getting any younger dammit!"

I would like to bring a jellyfish or something back from Enceladus or Europa (where there is probably life right now) and show it to you, and laugh. And then in a "horrible" accident it would sting you with an amazing unstudied deadly venom (that actually turns out to be its reproductive juices, harmless to other creatures

I got to agree. Can't you get a new hobby? This is an example of the fundamental unfairness of reality. It took a couple of minutes for you to post that drivel. It's going to take the human race generations to prove you wrong.

The source tapes were from Australia. The highest quality video from the moon landing were in Australia. Since they decided to land on the moon early, the US was under the horizon, so they transmitted to Australia instead.

They are saying that only a VHS tape of the landing is left, and that all the original tapes were erased/lost/destroyed. But this new tape is FROM one of those original tapes, albeit from the Sydney archives who relayed the data since they were part of the line-of-sight network to communicate with the astronauts.

Not really. It's like Leonardo himself deciding that, rather than buy a new canvas, he will reuse one of his old paintings--perhaps that old one with the very impressive landscape that won him all those awards and praise, but which is mostly forgotten in his attic by now--and paint over it a picture of a chick he saw walk by the market yesterday, with a sensual and intriguing smile.

And you have the death penalty in the US - which you tend to otherwise use for inconsequential stuff mostly?

Yeah we in the US tend to use the death penalty all willy nilly, mainly on those who put long term planning into their well thought out murders. But I'm sure you didn' t know any of the victims so you personally could say those crimes were inconsequential.

...not saying the death penalty its right, just saying the US isn't all like the worlds caricature of Texas. Aside from their ridiculous school text book mandates, neither is all of Texas for that matter.

At the time of the Moon landing, three stations - Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra, and Parkes in New South Wales - simultaneously recorded the events onto magnetic data tape. The direct recordings were not of broadcast quality, says John, so they had to set up a regular TV camera pointed at a small black-and-white TV screen in the observatory to obtain higher-quality images that could be relayed to television stations around the world.

They didn't use the TV camera to obtain a higher quality, but to convert from the odd signal used by NASA [1] to PAL/NTSC.

1: the nonstandard TV signals were used to make video transmission possible in the small amount of bandwidth available.

Really? in my opinion it looks like crap. The original one has some noise, and a hell of a lot more detail, look at the moon's surface around the rover compared to this "higher quality" remaster. There is almost no detail there, just a gray blur.

It literally looks like they just removed the little bit of noise, which i really didn't see a problem with, and then ran it though a soft focus filter

"high-quality and brighter images of Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder"

Oh, good, the remastered moon landing. In a year or two we'll get the special edition, with all new special effects. The once-lifeless moon will have all manner of alien life. Probably the golf ball will swing first at the astronauts.

Additional footage of the astronauts' training will be released, but it will be unpopular with fans of the oringal moon landing. Much of the criticism will focus on a goofy sidekick they meet, who somehow seems to play an important role in spite of being a babbling fool.

Later there will be a DVD release with the SE footage alongside the video as it originally aired. HD and 3D versions will follow eventually.

A total of twelve people have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two US pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions across a 41-month time span starting over four decades ago on July 21, 1969 UTC, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 (with Armstrong being first to step foot on the surface), and ending on December 14, 1972 UTC with Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 (with Cernan being the last to step off the lunar surface). All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained onboard the Command Module. The last three missions had a rover to drive around for increased mobility [Wikipedia]